As outlined in this story on Develop, Crytek managing director Avni Yerli has struck back at accusations about the independent German developer's hiring and firing practices that showed up last week this anonymous tumblr blog. "I think the blog is unfair to the people who are working here at Crytek," Yerli says. "It harms the great work they’ve done. It is very distressing for us to think that an individual thinks we have been treating them unfairly. It’s very disappointing." The blog says: "that staff feel uncertain of their futures within the company and either jump ship, or get fired unlawfully and are forced to legally settle their dispute in the courts. Several ex-Crytek employees have already been successful in mounting legal battles and won settlements, yet Crytek still treat staff as disposable pieces of meat to be discarded at will." It also accuses management of "demanding six months of crunch time due to project management failures. This caused certain members of staff to suffer both in medical and personal ways." It offers a list of positions vacated due to "resignation and / or unlawfully firing," a well as a vague assertion about the sinister nature of the developer moving to new offices with "70 fewer seats."

Yerli's responses, excerpted from a full unedited interview, include a dispute of that last point about their new space. "The new Frankfurt office is larger and has more desks than the old Frankfurt office," Yerli told them. "Our new office is laid out for growth and not for reduction." And while admitting that the list of vacated positions is accurate, he says that some of those were contractors, and the remainder left of their own accord. He also admits that the company has been involved in a couple of court cases over labor disputes, which were settled in Crytek's favor, adding" "I don’t want to make glory out of this. We are not proud of 'winning'." Finally, on the subject of crunch time, he says the crunch on Crysis 2 was "three months maximum," and that: "we had not enforced weekend work – during crunch people were given the choice to work one weekend day, but only if they chose to."

Beamer wrote on Sep 5, 2011, 20:01:Have you guys actually worked in other countries?Yes, there are rules about certain workers, but anywhere I've been abroad has longer work days than we do. Hell, my company is based out of Italy, and the employees in that office do 10-12 hour days every single day. They put in much longer hours than those of us in the states.

My friends in a Swiss company (company to remain nameless) work an extra 0.5 hours a day (30 min), so 9 hours (8hr + 1hr lunch).

All full-time employees at said European company ALSO have a guarantee of that work-day... if they work even a minute over they're allowed to bank it. They can either leave early on a given day, or bank them to make vacations out of them. Done via signing in/out with a card. Granted this might be company-specific.

The starting vacation-time given to new employees is also 5 weeks. 5 flippin' weeks.

Meanwhile I work a lot of OT without any extra pay... but I get a straight salary. I'm not complaining, I like my job and compensation. I'm just saying... not all European companies are cut from the same cloth.

This comment was edited on Sep 5, 2011, 20:26.

"Space. It seems to go on and on forever. But then you get to the end and a gorilla starts throwing barrels at you." -Fry, Futurama